All The New Thinking Is About Loss.

If You Read Three Books A Day You Couldn't Read All The Poetry That's Being Published.

I Don't Know That I Had A Sense That There Was Such A Thing As "the Poetry World" In The 1960s And Early 70s. Maybe Poets Did, But For Me As An Onlooker And Reader Of Poetry, Poetry Felt Like It Was Part Of A Larger Literary World. I Mean, Even The Phrase "the Poetry World" Reflects A Sort Of Balkanization Of American Literary And Artistic Life That Has To Some Extent Happened Since Then.

I Think That The Job Of Poetry, Its Political Job, Is To Refresh The Idea Of Justice, Which Is Going Dead In Us All The Time.

There Isn't A River Or Creek In The Country - Or There Are Very Few - That Doesn't Have Some Small Group Of People Working On A Restoration Or Creek Cleanup Project. Let Me Give You One Example That's A Great Metaphor: In Washington, D.c., There Is A Group Called The Anacostia Watershed Society. Two Rivers Converge And Define Washington - One Which Everybody Knows About, The Potomac, And The Anacostia, Which They Don't. The Anacostia Is One Of The Most Polluted Urban Rivers In The Country.

One Thing We Do Know Is That Mass Literacy Is A Product Of The 19th Century, At Least In English-speaking Cultures - Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada, And The U. S.